High Voltage Transformer

Recognizable at a glance

If you asked someone to draw the power grid, they would probably draw this. The high-voltage transformer is the machine most people picture when they picture a substation: a heavy steel body, rows of cooling fins down its flanks, and porcelain bushings up top arranged almost ceremonially. I wanted the model to carry that same presence: unapologetically industrial, and hard to mistake for anything else.

The inspiration for this one was sitting on my laptop the whole time: a sticker a friend designed as swag for another friend's company, stuck to my laptop lid for years. Every time I opened it at work I thought the same thing, that I could build it in LEGO, and eventually that idea reached critical mass and I spent a weekend proving myself right. The result is a little monochrome for my taste, but the brown insulators carry it, especially against the metallic silver conductors up top. A few of the techniques I worked out here, the heat exchangers and the removable top in particular, I already expect to reuse on other transformers. I made that top lift off on purpose: the interior is empty for now, but there's room to come back and build the internals once I have a sense of how hard that will be.

Everybody's favorite equipment

A machine of the postwar buildout, installed as BEPCO pushed its transmission voltages higher than the early grid had ever carried. The first one sat at the Ironhill substation on one of the trunk corridors, stepping down the voltage for the primary line serving the town. It was the most expensive thing behind the fence, ran hot, watched closely, and replaced reluctantly. The Company's archive record notes, with admirable understatement, that ordering a new one was never a same-week affair, and its Instruction Booklet is filed with all the reverence the machine plainly expects.